Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

No, they lifted the res restrictions a week or 2 ago.

 

Yep, there are some established sites with fire rings and tables as well as some 'primitive' places that have be pre-disturbed.

Edit: Here's a pic of one of the established sites

 

Yep, “at” but not “on”. There is a “dry camp” (i.e. no water source) with tables and fire rings right by the road near the dunes.

 

Looks like a great trip, I'll be out there this weekend to climb Telescope.

Also, the steelies look rad.

Cheers!

 

Many thanks! Have fun and safe climb!

 

this is an interesting read:https://thedailygardener.org/?s=mary+dedecker

last time i drove through Mary Dedecker Canyon (9/30/21) i got lost as i exited the canyon, followed tracks to the left because the old road was gone in wash-out. spent an hour going down the fan then turning around backtracking.



I camp at Eureka Dunes on occasion. There are steel fire rings there and you can have a legal campfire. In Dec 2017 i camped at a spot east of the fire rings that had
a built up stone fire ring, looked recently used and I enjoyed a campfire. At that time I did not think of it as illegal. I do now, and wont build a campfire there again.



I'm fortunate that I can enjoy the Dunes environment once in a while. We can thank Mary Dedecker for saving the dunes as we see them today. there are still old off track scars there, and areas of closure due to restoration. We are lucky we can still transit the steel pass road, it could have been closed off.

 

We too got lost following what looked to be a well traveled trail. I was using my route on GaiaGPS but still went the wrong way. Had to get the NatGeo Topo map out to find the direction to the actual trail/road.

 

I read Dedecker flooded this summer washing out the road and scouring the gravel and rocks out of the steps making it more challenging than it has been for some time. How was it when you went through?

Considering going through in a couple of weeks likely southbound though I might reverse the route if less troublesome…

 

The steps have had more rocks piled up, though we added more to help. My friend and I are not the most experienced off-roaders and felt that coming down was doable but we would probably not be able to go up them, especially the narrow one in the middle. The rest of the canyon was fine and very beautiful.

The flooding washing out the road would explain how we lost our way out.

 

it was more challenging, at least it looked that way. still lots of gravel under the steps. i've gone both ways several times in past few years, never had an issue. this time going toward Eureka I scraped and banged my way over some rock. I thought at the time i would not have got up it. or i could have just stacked a lot of rocks, which i don't like to do. more passage should see more rock stacking and back to normal I'd think...

 

Well, it's not Death Valley, but under the assumption that if you like Death Valley you probably also like other parts of the Mojave...

Mojave National Preserve

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Five days around MNP including crossing paths with another TW member and a long road from no place to no place.

Trip Report - Part 1 and Part 2

 

Very nice photos!

 

Did you convert your camera to IR or was that in LR?

 

The second photo is taken with a full spectrum converted Panasonic ZS100 shot with a 720nm external filter. Processing is the fairly common white balance on something with chlorophyll and then red/blue channel swap. As this is only a 1" sensor camera and IR processing typically needs a fair bit of contrast boost I actually burst shot about ten shots and then aligned and averaged them in PS to reduce noise for a smooth sky. I like IR for mid-day desert shots as it greatly reduces haze. I've usually done most IR shots as monochrome but in this case the false color IR was more interesting (or so I thought at least).

I've just started using the ZS100 as my hiking camera so I can have one small camera for both visible and IR photography that goes from 25-250 equivalent with halfway decent performance. The ZS100 is unusual in being a compact "super zoom" camera with a lens that doesn't do too bad at IR (though as you can see at the wide end it gets soft on the edges in IR though it is much better in the visible). Like most lenses at IR it still has a bit of a subtle "hot spot" which is actually not very noticeable in single shots but makes trying to stitch a panorama a real pain (this is actually a problem with almost every lens no matter the claims of "no hot spot" you might find on some sites for a given lens).

Prior to this trip if I've had IR with me it has been an 830 nm converted E-M5II and the Panasonic 14-45/3.5-5.6 and 45-175/4-5.6 (those two lenses happen to do really well in IR). I never took that out on hikes with me which meant that I wasn't using it during some of the times it would be most useful (like peak vistas). The ZS100 doesn't perform quite as well in the IR but it will get used a lot more I suspect...

First photo is a Z7+24-200 if anyone cares!

 

I'm glad to see interest in IR. I have a modified Rebel Ti. I definitely don't use it as much as I did when I bought it--I'm the second owner. With the increase in capability of many of the pocket cameras, if I was to do it again, I'd use one of those.

 

I got a new daily driver and was road tripping from the bay area to socal. Had some time to burn so why not take the Prius to the northwest boundary of Death Valley as it may never get up there again.

 

Interesting quick read about Mary Dedecker. I assumed the canyon was named long ago by an early DV explorer.

 

Howdy,

I had a fantastic weekend out in the Panamints. The weather was beautiful and the sky was clear.
A buddy and I stayed in Mahogany Flats on Friday night, to be honest it wasn't the best night I've had up there.
There were some noisy folks wandering through our camp, it was also packed, and to top it off there is a ban on campfires.
Around 5:30 we started the hike to Telescope. Starting before dawn under the stars was amazing. Unfortunately, altitude sickness caused my buddy to yak a few times so we turned around after about 4 miles.

We decided to loose the crowd and head down to find some where off NPS land where we could have a fire.

On the way home this morning there were a few burros chilling out on the highway, we hopped out and got them off the road with a few apples.

Another great weekend in the Mojave!


Saturday sunrise on Telescope Peak.


Sunset on the Panamints.



Friendly Burros!

Cheers!

 

How was the crowd there overall? We are going in a few weeks and I heard that it's crowded now which is unfortunate.

 

I can't speak for the whole park since I was only in one tiny portion of it. That particular campground was pretty busy, the road going up was in great condition and that opens the door to lots more traffic. The other campgrounds I saw, Thorndike and Wildrose were not busy. I my experience only a handful of places in the park are crowded, gas stations are unfortunately one of them. Once you're down a dirt road you will get away from most folks. Maybe someone else has better info on the rest of the park.
Have a great trip,
Cheers!